Take the RPG Personality Survey!

[Dethklok]

Hi everyone! I've been procrastinating about this for a while, but I wanted to let you know about the survey I'm running to find out what roleplay gamers are like - how they're different from people who don't play, and how they're different from each other. So far I have 39 responses, and I'm looking to get 100 for a decent analysis.

SURVEY CLOSED TO ROLEPLAYERS. Thanks so much for your responses!

At the end, you have the chance of requesting your scores to see how they turn out. Or you can remain anonymous; so far that's what most of the respondents have done. Either way, I think the questions are interesting, and I hope you enjoy it.

[Totally Guy]

A lot of your questions say "In this country..." but you can't presume that stuff online!

Where did you get that RPG list? Loads of game authors didn't even get a look in. Not a single game (I noticed) by anyone like Vincent Baker, Meguey Baker, Luke Crane, Ben Robbins, Jake Norwood, Josh AC Newman, Joe McDaldno, Jason Morningstar, Jared Sorensen, Emily Care Boss or John Harper. And they've done some good stuff!

[Castaras]

Done. :smallsmile:

Quite liked that one of the sections (real world experiences?) I was just going "Strongly agree strongly agree ... strongly agree. Huh." Are you watching me? :smalltongue::smallamused:

[Morph Bark]

How many sections are there exactly? I have a bit of a short attention span when it comes to surveys, despite having done them for money at my former university.

[factotum]

I'd fill it in, but it's been 20 years since I actually sat down to play a tabletop RPG with anyone and I suspect I'm not the same now as I was then... :smallwink:

[Silverbit]

Just did the survey, looks pretty good.

[Feytalist]

Did it.

No real thoughts, seems about standard. Maybe a bit more in-depth about personality stuff than usual for this kind of thing.

I'd be interested to see your eventual findings, if you care about sharing them here.

[Morbis Meh]

Done, should be interesting to see the answer spread...

[AttilaTheGeek]

Done. That was really long, but hopefully it should let you get some good data about RPGers.

Have you considered also posting the survey in the Roleplaying Games forum? You'd probably get more responses there.

[Amidus Drexel]

Not a bad survey, though. There weren't too many questions where I had trouble picking an answer, so you're a step up from most other surveys I've taken. :smallamused:


How many sections are there exactly? I have a bit of a short attention span when it comes to surveys, despite having done them for money at my former university.

It's four pages, and they're kind of long.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I stopped taking it when the education level had an "in college" option as the only "haven't finished school" option.

[Mando Knight]

A lot of your questions say "In this country..." but you can't presume that stuff online!

What I saw of it, the stuff about "this country" was left open-ended enough that it wasn't necessarily specific to any one country.

[Brother Oni]

I'm with Totally Guy - a lot of 'In your country...' but obviously very American-centric, thus some of them aren't particularly applicable despite the appearance of being open ended.

[Eldariel]

Basically all the questions on the last page I'd just say "I can't know until science reveals more" but such an option wasn't available :smallfrown: Also, "This country" is Finland for every point where it was mentioned. Also, the last page has a few really weird statements; "soon" with regards to oil reserves for example is a completely subjective value and thus I can't answer the question since I don't know the value the asker has had in mind (and of course, demand isn't the problem, price becomes the problem first).

[KenderWizard]

I did it!

Interesting survey, and I left my email to get my results! I want to see what I'm like compared to other RPers.

For "this country" I just ignored that phrase and answered generally.

[CigarPete]

Took the survey, but guess I should have left my email in the comments to get my answers? Please, let us know what the results look like and what conclusions you are drawing from them. I assume this is for some sort of school project?

[WarforgedBard]

Very thorough ,but also quite lengthy. Could be reworked to cover more aspects of an alignment in fewer questions.

[Starwulf]

I took it, and included my email so I can see how I compare ^^

[JustSomeGuy]

I thought there were a few questions of a complicated nature which had to be boiled down to a basic yes/no, and one in particular by the way it was worded had me answer one way but my overwhelming opinion on the subject as a whole would be the opposite.

[Dethklok]

And, just like that, I now have more than 80 complete responses. Usually this takes a lot more scrounging around, but I've been buried by all the responses I've been getting. (That's a good thing, thanks everybody). Now all I need are non-gamer controls, which I'm trying to get at another site.

Also, Totally Guy - I didn't write all the questions; most were taken from other research. I'm assuming that when most respondents see "this country" they interpret it as wherever they live, but I'm an empiricist, not a theorist - I don't believe it makes sense to discuss what the questions mean until after the survey is over, and the responses have been analyzed.

[Feytalist]

Also, Totally Guy - I didn't write all the questions; most were taken from other research. I'm assuming that when most respondents see "this country" they interpret it as wherever they live, but I'm an empiricist, not a theorist - I don't believe it makes sense to discuss what the questions mean until after the survey is over, and the responses have been analyzed.

You're a statistician? We never had projects like these in university. This is much more interesting than the nonsense we had to model.

Also, glad we all could help, heh.

[Rolling Thunder]

I participated too. MAy I suggest for the next surveys you create to include some questions about the geographical postion (country, continent) which also would give some sort of cultural background? Maybe include questions about the religion if you talk about believes? I understand you only collect 200 surveys (100 gamers, 100 non-gamers) so that might not be feasible or helpful here but I would love to see if there is any correlation. Also, will you post the statistics here or link to them?

[Dethklok]

All right! It's taken a lot of time and effort, but I now have a completed set of 100 responses, and the analysis can begin.


You're a statistician? We never had projects like these in university. This is much more interesting than the nonsense we had to model.
That's because it isn't for university; I'm doing this out of pure, personal interest. But I do understand Gaussian distributions, hypothesis testing, factor analysis, and modern personality theory.



May I suggest for the next surveys you create to include some questions about the geographical postion (country, continent) which also would give some sort of cultural background?
The more questions you ask, the worse your response rate. As it turned out, I believe the survey was already too long.


I understand you only collect 200 surveys (100 gamers, 100 non-gamers) so that might not be feasible or helpful here but I would love to see if there is any correlation. Also, will you post the statistics here or link to them?
I'm treating liking for roleplaying games as a continuous variable, so I only needed 100 surveys. While under ordinary circumstances researchers do not release their data, I might be persuaded to release sections of it - so long as those sections could never be traced to any respondent - if questions arose regarding the appropriateness of my analysis.


So! Now that the responses are in, I can reveal the hypotheses I am testing; I figure many of you may want to comment on them before the results are in. I'm reposting this from EN world (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?337747-Take-the-RPG-Personality-Survey-Here!/page2), where this survey began.

But before I do, let me give a little big of background. I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons as a child as a game of the imagination, and that's the way I played roleplaying games growing up. But as I grew more familiar with the hobby and the people who played roleplaying games, I started to notice that this wasn't really a game of the imagination at all. What it was was a game of putting bigger and bigger numbers on a character sheet in a way that represented getting more and more powerful. Most people didn't play rpgs for the reasons that I did - in dimly lit rooms with thematic music, using outside research, character accents, and careful timing trying to capture an imaginative experience; they played to kill monsters, get treasure, and make the next level "to the exclusion of other considerations such as storytelling, atmosphere and camaraderie." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powergaming) And my sense is that Dungeons and Dragons is designed specifically with the latter goals in mind. Thus, I am very skeptical about claims that rpgs are games of the imagination.

Secondarily to this, I've seen many people claim that alignment is meaningless. Knowing what I do about personal values, I doubt this - it seems to me that Liberals and Libertarians should be less Lawful, and that Machiavellian individuals less Good, than people with opposing values.

Therefore, my hypotheses are:

I. The more people like RPGs, the higher in psychometric "Openness" (a construct referring to imagination and unconventionality) and "Schizotypy" (related to vividity of imagination and to generalized strangeness of experience) they may be. I personally doubt roleplayers will be different from controls in this regard, but this is a hypothesis I consider worth investigating.

II. Among those who play RPGs, liking for Dungeons and Dragons, either absolutely or relative to other games, will correlate inversely with Openness.

III. When analyzing peoples preferences in roleplaying games, a factor will emerge that broadly pits attitudes towards powergaming against attitudes towards story and aesthetic experience.

IV. This powergaming factor will correlate with a liking for D&D (again, either absolute or relative to other games) and negatively with Openness.

V. Self-ratings on the Law-Chaos dimension of alignment will correlate with political Libertarianism, so that respondents indicating (for example) belief in the freedom to use Marijuana or own guns will tend towards Chaos.

VI. Self-ratings on the Good-Evil dimension of alignment will correlate with Machiavellianism, so that respondents indicating a greater acceptance of lying and manipulation will tend towards Evil.

[Starwulf]

Well, I can say I'm already against the grain when it comes to #4. I love D&D, but I do NOT play it for powergaming purposes, I'm a huge fan of roleplaying, storytelling, and exploring my characters every facet. Exactly how I replied in the survey as well. I do like to find treasure of course, and getting stronger is great, but the story and roleplaying takes precedence for me. Whenever I make a character, I often write up 3-10 pages of backstory for my character. I've made up crazy flaws/feats for some of my characters(Like a Cleric that was based on summoning, but had an odd tick that would cause his summonings to either be a level or two stronger then normal, or he'd summon...a chicken! A regular, plain ole chicken. Sadly, I never got to play that character, as the game died out(as many sadly tend to on these forums), and I doubt I still have the backstory, it was on my old computer.

[Feytalist]

That's pretty interesting. Thanks for the info. A whole bunch of those questions make sense now. Those personality questions specifically, heh.

Couple of thoughts:

I wonder how these results will correlate to logical versus creative thinking (left/right brain, whatever). I'd think that most roleplayers would be more creative (related to your "openness" factor, I guess), but then also that logical thinkers would be attracted to a rules-heavy system like D&D. Is that something you're looking at?

Some people might have definite views about political/sociological issues, but still consider themselves middle-of-the-road "Neutral" types. Will that skew your results any? Other than a stronger median bias, I guess.

Of course, it behooves us to bring up the Stormwind fallacy, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Powergaming and/or optimisation is not necessarily diametrically opposite roleplaying. Accepting (or at least, acknowledging) that, how will it influence your analysis? Especially with regards to your hypothesis III. I'd be interested to see that result, at the least.

[AttilaTheGeek]

I'd very much like to see the aggregate results of all the surveys together.

[Dethklok]

That's pretty interesting. Thanks for the info. A whole bunch of those questions make sense now. Those personality questions specifically, heh.
Yeah. In retrospect there are lot of things I should have done differently, though. I really should have made the RPG section shorter, but I had no idea whether I could find anything like the preference for powergaming over immersion that I was looking for.


I wonder how these results will correlate to logical versus creative thinking (left/right brain, whatever). I'd think that most roleplayers would be more creative (related to your "openness" factor, I guess), but then also that logical thinkers would be attracted to a rules-heavy system like D&D. Is that something you're looking at?
When people speak of right vs. left brainedness, I think they are usually invoking something like "high Openness, high Emotionality, high Extraversion" vs. "low Openness, low Emotionality, low Extraversion," although it's hard to say. (In fact, I thought the entire right/left brain concept was a pop-psych myth until I read a recent study where they found that the size of a specific brain area on the right or left side of the brain related to personality traits that look reminiscent of Openness, Emotionality, and Extraversion to me.)


Some people might have definite views about political/sociological issues, but still consider themselves middle-of-the-road "Neutral" types. Will that skew your results any? Other than a stronger median bias, I guess.
...I don't believe it will, because I'm using a correlational analysis, rather than trying to compare group means. It's true that some neutrals will be authoritarian and some libertarian. And some some moderates will be lawful and some chaotic. It's just noise in the dataset, essentially. The more that this happens, the weaker the correlation will be - and the less correct my hypothesis would be, really.


Of course, it behooves us to bring up the Stormwind fallacy, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Powergaming and/or optimisation is not necessarily diametrically opposite roleplaying. Accepting (or at least, acknowledging) that, how will it influence your analysis? Especially with regards to your hypothesis III. I'd be interested to see that result, at the least.
As a prelude to the findings, people exist on a continuum - some like roleplaying games more, and some less; some are more "role-players" than they are "roll-players," and some the reverse. But the study results find plenty of people who like both powergaming and immersivity a whole lot, and plenty of people who like neither very much.


Well, I can say I'm already against the grain when it comes to #4. I love D&D, but I do NOT play it for powergaming purposes, I'm a huge fan of roleplaying, storytelling, and exploring my characters every facet.
To every trend there are exceptions, Starwulf. The weaker the trend, the more exceptions there will be.


I'd very much like to see the aggregate results of all the surveys together.
You mean, like the average ratings given to the different games, playing styles, and personal value questions? I don't think that's a problem. Is that what you're asking for?

[Dethklok]

OK! I've spent all yesterday and this morning (all yesterday and this morning. It took a long time) carrying out the analysis. Here's what I found.


GROUNDWORK.

The scales showed minimum reliability, but in some cases only barely; Cronbach's Alpha (standardized) was .66 for the Openness scale, .75 for the Schizotypy scale, .58 for the Libertarianism scale, and .53 for the Machiavellian scale. (.50 is generally regarded as the absolute minimum reliability.)

Fortunately, I had the means to check whether the least reliable scale, Machiavellianism, was functioning as expected, by matching it against respondent Honesty-Humility; the correlation was a highly significant r = -.39. As a check on cross contamination, the personality scales were run against one another; none of the scales showed correlations beyond .3, which is typical in psychological tests.

(What this means in simple terms is that, while the scales work, they're a bit noisy, and will make it harder to see trends that might be there. This became an issue when testing Hypothesis I.)


HYPOTHESIS I.

First it was necessary to construct a “liking for RPGs” scale. This was done by combining three things (through factor analysis): 1. the respondent’s average rating for all RPGs listed, 2. the respondent’s highest rating for all RPGs listed, and 3. the amount of overall RPG knowledge, as measured by the number of non “no-opinion” answers given for the RPGs listed. Controls had no knowledge of RPGs and were assigned scores of 3 for all roleplaying games, putting them well below the 1st percentile on the “liking for RPGs” scale.

No significant correlation appeared between this scale and Openness, or Schizotypy. The correlation between liking for RPGs and Openness was near significance, however: r = .16, p = .051. There was therefore some question as to whether a liking for RPGs really is more Open; fortunately I realized there was another way of checking this hypothesis later, when I resolved hypothesis III, below.

So at this point there is no support for a claim that the roleplayers are more imaginative than others, either in terms of depth of thinking, or in terms of vividness or bizarreness of experience. (On a positive note, Schizotypy often presents in clinical settings; roleplayers may take comfort in being able to say that there is no evidence supporting rumors that the hobby makes them mentally ill!)


HYPOTHESIS II.

To test Hypothesis II, a measure for liking of D&D needed to be constructed. Factor analysis of the five D&D items (OE through 3e) found a clear common factor; liking for these five games was simply averaged to arrive at a strong “Liking for D&D” scale. Interestingly, 4e showed no relationship with liking for the other D&D games, and was therefore treated separately.

There was some question as to whether a respondent's raw preference for D&D, or relative preference for D&D over other games, would correlate negatively with Openness. To measure the latter, the average score given to all non-D&D games was subtracted from the D&D score to arrive at a D&D-NET score. Both this and the raw score were compared to respondent Openness scores. The correlations were r = -.28 and r = -.29; both were highly significant, with one-tailed p-vaules of .0044 and .0036, respectively. Whether one considers absolute or relative preferences for D&D, there is evidence to suggest that greater liking for D&D games appears to go along with lower Openness, and all that this entails.

It should be stressed that these correlations are not particularly large, and that many individuals will easily fall outside of this trend; it is only at the large scale that this relationship becomes clear. (As a final note, no correlations were observed between liking for 4e and any personality trait.)


HYPOTHESIS III.

Factor analysis was carried out on the RPG preferences to determine whether a recognizable factor pitting powergaming against story and aesthetic experience could be identified. Factor analysis returned a clear two-factor structure, with the first factor dominated by positively loading items describing a clear liking for powergaming, and the second factor again dominated by positively loading items repeatedly describing a liking for creativity and immersive elements. Because all rotations are mathematically equivalent, these were simply rotated 45 degrees to arrive at a solution with one factor of powergaming vs. creative immersion, and another factor of straightforward liking for RPGs.

To verify that the powergaming vs. creative immersion factor was indeed found, some of the items with moderate and high loadings are listed here. Those loading negatively included I like the chance to be creative, I like a role-playing game with mystery, I like simple rules, I like plausibility or realism, I play for the story, and I like to be immersed in a different setting. Positively loading items included I like the gamebooks, I like many kinds of dice, I play for the combat, I like lots of weapons, spells, and abilities, I like a detailed rule system, I like getting treasure, I like building up my character's abilities, I like collecting powerful items, I like to play characters who are extremely powerful, and I like amazing powers.

Thus, it appears that one can speak of a broad preference for powergaming vs. creativity, aesthetics, and immersion in another world.

But the other factor was a factor of general liking for roleoplaying games. (Almost all items loaded positively on this factor, with the exception of I just like goofing off - I don't care if we actually play, which loaded negatively.) This factor, I realized, could be used as a clearer test of the proposition that a liking for roleplaying games was related to Openness. Running factor scores against Openness scores revealed it is not: The correlation was r = -.02. So we may comfortably uphold the null hypothesis, and conclude that a general engagement in the hobby of roleplaying is unrelated to psychological Openness.


HYPOTHESIS IV.

Since Hypothesis III wasn’t falsified, we may go on to Hypothesis IV - this would not have been possible if the factor of powergaming vs creative immersion were not found. But checking Hypothesis IV was a simple matter; the Powergaming vs. Creative Immersion factor correlates significantly with a liking for D&D (r = .226, p = .0175, all values one-tailed), D&D-NET (r = .229, p = .0165), and even with a liking for 4e, though to a lesser extent (r = .180, p = .047). Finally, as predicted, it also correlates significantly negatively with Openness (r = -.27, p = .0051).

This is consistent with the claim that people who play RPGs for the creative and immersive experiences are generally more imaginative and artistic (or as some might say, pretentious) relative to those who play roleplaying games more for the dice, the gamebooks, and the chance to build up amazing powers. Further, it helps to explain why D&D is the game that it is; although there are many reasons to play D&D, Dungeons and Dragons appears to cater better to powergaming than to creative experience. We know this simply because, if these findings are correct, those with a powergaming mentality generally like Dungeons and Dragons better than those who play RPGs for the chance to be creative.


HYPOTHESIS V.

Hypothesis V was checked by creating a “Law” scale. Law was coded as 3 for an answer of "Lawful," 2 for "Neutral," and 1 for "Chaotic."

I’d like to note here that many respondents took the time to explain to me that alignment was meaningless. Such claims were amusing in light of the finding of a negative correlation between Law and Libertarianism: r = -.40, p = 8.04×10-5 (one tailed). The chance for a correlation of this magnitude to appear without there being any genuine relationship between libertarianism and chaos is one in over 10,000. This is like being shown a balanced, fair d10, and calling beforehand what it will roll four times in a row. Thus, it seems that the idea of an affiliation with Chaos has a real-world relationship to libertarian sympathy.

Although renaming the Law-Chaos dimension in terms of Liberty vs. Order might compromise the fantasy setting, it could be considered less ambiguous, and engender fewer debates, than the standard terms Gary Gygax used.


HYPOTHESIS VI.

To test Hypothesis VI, a “Good” scale was created analogously to the Law scale—Good was coded as 3 for an answer of “Good,” 2 for "Neutral," and 1 for "Chaotic." The Good scale was independent of the Law scale (r = .03). Running this against Machiavellianism, I found a significant negative correlation, as expected: r = -.34, p = 6.7×10-4 (one tailed). The chance for this to have occurred spuriously is similar to the chance for being shown a balanced, fair d10, and calling beforehand what a person will roll on it three times in a row. Therefore, there is evidence to support the idea that an affiliation with Evil has a real-world relationship with Machiavellianism. So while alignment may be a pain, at this point it seems highly doubtful that alignment is truly meaningless, since the self-descriptions of respondents’ alignment were useful predictors of their personal values.


SUMMARY.

The results of this survey are consistent with the following conclusions:

* Engagement in the roleplaying hobby does not appear to be related to imagination. Unimaginative people enjoy roleplaying as much as imaginative people do. For many, roleplaying is more about beloved game books, favorite dice, miniature figures, and good friends, than it is a game of imagination.

* Some people do play for the story, setting, or chance to be creative; others prefer powergaming. A preference for powergaming goes along with a liking for Dungeons and Dragons, and both likings, for powergaming and for D&D, go along with greater conformity and lower imagination and depth (or arguably, with less pretentiousness). However, this trend was not very pronounced, so clearly there will be many exceptions.

* The classic alignment graph describes the degree to which one subscribes to notions of liberty rather than order, or to integrity over Machiavellianism. This does not mean that human values don’t include more dimensions, such as conservatism. Nevertheless, alignment is not meaningless.


MY SINCERE THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO MADE THESE FINDINGS POSSIBLE!

I will start on calculating and sending out your personal scores in a few days; you can look for them by next Wednesday.

[Feytalist]

Whoa, it certainly looks in-depth enough.

I was expecting the noise across your data; playing games like these are spread over the whole world, after all. And your results aren't exactly earth-shattering, but it does confirm your prior thoughts, which is always nice.

I'm surprised by the significance of the correlations in your alignment tests; that's a nice result to keep around for future use, certainly. It might be the result of some spurious preselection, specifically on the part of the actual questions you used (they might have been set up in such a way to guide the user to answer a certain way), but there's always a chance of that in some small way, and anyway I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Anyway, thanks for the results. Very informative.

[Castaras]

Could you define openness?

[AttilaTheGeek]

Huh, that's a fascinating analysis.

What I had asked for was an "average" answer for each question from the roleplaying group, to find out to what extent the community overall answered questions like, for example, "I like lots of dice". As someone who makes a fair number of homebrew classes, I want to know if roleplayers like abilities that use dice as opposed to fixed numbers.

But I also want to see how much the community likes different games, and what the community's personality looks like as a whole. I'd leave out the stuff about politics and religion, though; it's against board rules.

[Dethklok]

Just to let everybody know, I'm still working through the survey results; there are about 20 left, and they should all be sent out by tomorrow evening.


Whoa, it certainly looks in-depth enough.

I was expecting the noise across your data; playing games like these are spread over the whole world, after all. And your results aren't exactly earth-shattering, but it does confirm your prior thoughts, which is always nice.
True!

If I may, though, I'd like to add that it's more than just "nice" from my perspective - it's necessary. I know that soft scientists often generate huge correlation matrices and pick out anything that shows up with a p-value below .05 as "statistically significant." But I think this is poor practice, since a d20 thrown 45 times could give get four rolls of 1 without that indicating anything special about those throws. So studies often purport to show things that they don't really show very well. I think it's much better use of statistics to say, "OK! I'm going to throw this d20. And I predict it will come up 1. So if it doesn't, then you can regard my prediction as wrong."


I'm surprised by the significance of the correlations in your alignment tests; that's a nice result to keep around for future use, certainly. It might be the result of some spurious preselection, specifically on the part of the actual questions you used (they might have been set up in such a way to guide the user to answer a certain way), but there's always a chance of that in some small way, and anyway I wouldn't worry about it too much.
You know those were exactly the thoughts that crossed my mind, in about that same order, too. No study will ever be perfect, but I do trust these results pretty well. And of course I know a lot of people may not like the results, but hey, anyone who disagrees that the good-evil axis approximates to Machiavellianism, or the law-chaos axis approximates to Libertarianism, can always do their own study!


Could you define openness?
International research on the structure of human personality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEXACO_model_of_personality_structure) finds that certain personality factors appear across different languages. One factor, which psychologists (foolishly, but that's life) named Openness to Experience, was defined by terms like "intellectual, creative, unconventional, innovative, ironic" versus "shallow, unimaginative, conventional." I personally believe it represents psychological depth, artistic and philosophical curiosity, and nonconformity, much more than "Openness to Experience" (which is a quality demonstrated by Extraverts). Unfortunately, it seems that with personality dimensions, as with planets, whoever finds it first gets to name it.

You can read more about Openness here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_Experience).



Huh, that's a fascinating analysis.

What I had asked for was an "average" answer for each question from the roleplaying group, to find out to what extent the community overall answered questions like, for example, "I like lots of dice"
Here you go. (Answers were coded 1-5, except for Alignment, where answers were coded 1-3. So for example most respondents don't like goofing off instead of playing, most respondents think it's very important for a game to have a compelling setting, and 3rd Edition D&D was quite popular among those who participated.)


Original D&D (Holmes or earlier) 3.30
BECMI (rules cyclopedia D&D) 3.27
1st edition AD&D 3.29
2nd edition AD&D 3.43
3rd edition D&D / Pathfinder 4.12
4th edition D&D 2.66
Amber 3.02
Ars Magica 3.18
Barbarians of Lemuria 3.02
Big Eyes, Small Mouth 3.01
Blue Rose 3.02
Call of Cthulhu 3.47
Changeling: The Dreaming 3.04
Cyberpunk 3.22
d20 Modern 3.15
Deadlands 3.13
Dragon Warriors 3.06
Fudge 3.15
GURPS 3.10
Hackmaster 2.92
HERO System 3.04
Kult 3.04
Mage: the Ascension 3.19
Mutants & Masterminds 3.33
Paranoia 3.48
Palladium 3.00
Rolemaster or MERP 2.97
Runequest 3.13
Savage Worlds 3.28
Shadowrun 3.39
Star Wars 3.56
Traveller 3.19
Vampire: The Masquerade 3.34
Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay 3.18
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3.07
Werewolf: The Apocalypse 3.10
Wraith: The Oblivion 2.97
Zenobia 3.01
A Prehistoric setting 3.06
An Ancient world setting 3.75
A Medieval setting 4.16
A Steampunk setting 3.79
A Wild West setting 3.28
A Modern setting 3.58
A Superhero setting 3.22
A Horror setting 3.61
A Futuristic setting 4.00
A Space setting 3.98
A Surreal setting or Dream-world 3.27
An Alternate reality 3.72
An Exotic Culture 3.66
Low Fantasy (limited or no magic, superpowers, or anachronistic technology) 3.92
High Fantasy (plenty of magic, superpowers, or amazing technology) 3.98

Lawful (1-3) 2.07
Good (1-3) 2.70

play the roles of completely different people. 4.00
play characters who are extremely powerful. 3.29
model characters on people I've known or read about. 2.87
imagine myself, but doing things I could never do in real life. 3.35
be immersed in a different setting. 4.36
for the adventure. 4.37
for the challenge. 3.99
for the combat. 3.47
for the chance to make a difference. 3.46
for the story. 4.46
for the aesthetic experience. 3.61
to win. 2.31
run games as the GM. 3.75
making rules on the spot when I'm the GM. 3.18
carefully designing adventures for other players. 3.40
watching how players tackle the scenarios I run 3.92
chance to be creative, as a player or the GM. 4.46
chance to socialize with others. 4.09
chance to escape the boredom of real life. 3.71
chance to build another world. 4.27
role-playing game with mystery. 4.09
role-playing game with romance. 3.15
role-playing game with intrigue. 4.11
miniatures. 3.26
dice. 3.82
getting treasure. 3.58
building up my character's abilities. 4.04
collecting powerful items. 3.46
game books. 3.99
learning and applying the rules. 3.55
tinkering with the game and making my own changes. 3.87
I just like goofing off - I don't care if we actually play. 2.19

Many options for character creation 4.31
A compelling setting 4.60
Simple rules 3.69
Game balance 3.76
A detailed rule system 3.46
Battles that end quickly 3.47
Lots of weapons, spells, and abilities 3.80
Historical accuracy 3.01
Plausibility or realism 3.56
Character Classes 3.52
Skill systems 3.87
Many kinds of dice 3.45
Rules for almost any imaginable circumstance 3.04
Amazing powers 3.63
Generic rules that can handle any setting 3.58
Characters that don't die easily 3.25
Rules and mechanics meshed with the setting 3.89